As Trinidad and To­ba­go marks 188 years since eman­ci­pa­tion, the Pan African Fes­ti­val re­turns to­day with a re­newed call to deep­en un­der­stand­ing of African his­to­ry, cul­ture and iden­ti­ty while con­fronting the lega­cies of colo­nial­ism.

Cheese mak­er Star Sab­ga will have to spend an­oth­er week­end in prison be­fore a judge con­sid­ers and de­ter­mines whether she should be grant­ed in­ter­im re­lease. 

One day af­ter he and his wife were re­leased from State cus­tody, busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed was seen pub­licly for the first time yes­ter­day.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, SC, says any State of Emer­gency (SoE) law that al­lows a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to de­cide whether some­one re­mains in de­ten­tion amounts to giv­ing ju­di­cial pow­ers to the ex­ec­u­tive, which he be­lieves is con­trary to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Con­sti­tu­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­voke the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve has ex­posed what he de­scribes as a “cri­sis of gov­er­nance,” rais­ing broad­er con­cerns about the coun­try’s in­sti­tu­tions, po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship and hu­man rights pro­tec­tions.

Al­though Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has praised law en­force­ment’s ef­forts to re­duce se­ri­ous crimes, she says more work is need­ed to bring the fig­ures down fur­ther.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of abus­ing its emer­gency pow­ers, fol­low­ing the re­vo­ca­tion of the Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) is­sued against busi­ness­man Do­minic and his wife Genevieve, ar­gu­ing that the de­vel­op­ment rais­es se­ri­ous ques­tions about the ba­sis for their de­ten­tions.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the courts have “em­bar­rassed” the Gov­ern­ment in­to tem­porar­i­ly pulling back from what he de­scribed as an abuse of State of Emer­gency (SoE) pow­ers, but warns that the ad­min­is­tra­tion re­mains “a dan­ger to every cit­i­zen” de­spite the re­lease of busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve.

Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) chair­man Jagdeo Singh has ac­cused for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh of at­tempt­ing to avoid giv­ing ev­i­dence be­fore the com­mit­tee by cre­at­ing a smoke­screen of con­cerns to dic­tate how a par­lia­men­tary in­quiry should be con­duct­ed.

The re­place­ment of the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny af­ter just six months of ser­vice on the seabridge has sur­prised mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, one stake­hold­er told Guardian Me­dia the de­ci­sion to change the car­go boat has proven her crit­i­cism of the ves­sel was war­rant­ed.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les dra­mat­i­cal­ly set fire to a court or­der served on the par­ty over the fi­nanc­ing of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters on Thurs­day night, de­clar­ing that the Op­po­si­tion would not be in­tim­i­dat­ed by the le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

Hours af­ter a Mor­vant man was shot by un­known as­sailants while stand­ing out­side his home, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials said mo­bile pa­trols had been in­creased in the Port-of-Spain and Mor­vant dis­tricts.